108 CAPTAIN TUCKEY’S NARRATIVE. 
from the King of England, he begged it might not be pro- 
duced until all his gentlemen were dismissed. 
While we were seated in the audience court, the King’s 
women (of whom he has fifty), were peeping out of one of 
the squares, and before retiring, the King very politely 
offered me the choice of all his daughters, while his courtiers 
as civilly proferred their wives; so that I began to fear 
I should find myself in the same dilemma as Frere Jean (in 
Compere Matthieu) ; fortunately, however, the gentlemen 
who accompanied me were not so fastidious as the Frere’s 
companions. I however learnt that the ladies, though ap- 
panel y nothing loth to change husbands, resisted all soli- 
citations to consummation during day-light, under the ap- 
prehension that the fetiche would kill them. The language 
of the men in offermg their women was most disgusting 
and obscene ; being composed of the vilest words picked up 
from English, French, and Portuguese. The faces of many 
of the women were by no means unprepossessing, and their 
forms extremely symmetric. Among the men we saw one: 
marked with the small-pox, another with a short leg, and a 
third with a withered arm. Great numbers of the boys had 
a large knot at the navel. A cutaneous disorder seemed to 
be very general, and, like the itch, chiefly on the wrists ; 
and the hands of several of the men were perfectly bleached 
as if from a scald. 
